Lazarus
by Summoner Luna
Summary: She is shrouded in a darkness of her own making, and he is a man lost in time. They are both of them changed. [SquallxRinoa, and bonds re-forged.] [For The Successor 2016]
1. Chapter 1

She is broken when he finds her again, and they almost do not recognize each other.

The beach is always deserted this time of night, this time of year. The winter tourists of Dollet are all back in their rooms, miles north where the rocky beach breaks into small strips of sand. They do not bother the abandoned factory at the foot of the cliffs, with its broken glass and stories of ghosts, but if they did, they would know the ghosts are only a witch, trying to make sense of a world where she doesn't belong. They don't see her, floating towards the ocean at dusk, or the trail of shadows she leaves behind. The water is cold and numbs her legs, but she bathes herself in it, cleansing the illusions so she can have a few moments of clarity before the madness sets in again.

She doesn't see him watching her. She wonders, that she did not feel his approach, but then it has been a very long time, and she has done everything she could to sever the bond.

 _How long have you been there?_ she thinks, when she looks up and sees a man standing at the edge of the shore. He is holding a pair of shoes, and letting the water crash over dark fabric and doesn't seem to notice.

His hair is shorter now, and she thinks it doesn't suit him.

She lets a wave carry her back to shore, and stands up in the crashing tide. She is completely naked, but even in the cover of twilight she never sees his eyes leave her face. He is uncertain, but she knows him better than he knows himself. If he thought he was wrong, he would not be standing next to a naked woman on an isolated stretch of beach.

If he thought he was wrong, he wouldn't be here at all.

For a moment, she feels more than his eyes on her. Too many years ago to count, he held her, loved her. Even as the madness settled in, he drew her close to him, a grounding force. He couldn't feel her fading in his arms, couldn't tell that one day she would slip through them entirely, too convinced that whatever happened, they would figure it out together.

To his credit, he never tried to fix her. And in the darkest moments in the years that passed, she wondered if he wouldn't have fixed her anyway. Healed her, found a way to keep her tethered when she was trying so hard to float away.

She couldn't look at him, the day she left. She couldn't look back and see the hurt.

The hurt is still there.

He is not okay. And neither is she.

"I looked for you," he finally says, his voice almost lost to the crashing waves. "Everywhere."

"I'm sorry—I think you're mistaking me for someone else."

Her voice is cracked from lack of use, and she has to turn away before he can react. She walks towards the factory, surrounded by shadows of her own conjuring, and considers sending him away.

.

It's her. Squall knew it before he left his hotel room, and he wonders how long she's been living here. He's been to Dollet once every few months every year since she left, but tonight is the first night he got the feeling she might be near by.

It's the first time in a decade he's thought she might be nearby.

He almost misses his chance. He is at the foot of the cliffs, near the old satellite dish factory, just past where it stops being safe to go on foot. The locals have talked about the end of the beach before, and the haunted ruins. Talked about the stories teenagers come back with, about shadows that move around of their own volition. He feels foolish; how could he have missed it before?

And on cue, he sees the shadow moving towards the sea, and that is all she is. If he didn't know what he was looking for it would seem like a trick of the mind; his eyes seeing darkness and movement when there is only the figure of a woman. Until, she casts the darkness aside and steps, naked, into the ocean. Her hair is long and wild, and her skin glows in the starlight. So much of her is missing, but Squall is overwhelmed nonetheless.

She lets the waves crash over her knees for what feels like an eternity, before she walks further out, to where only her head is visible over the black water, and she lets that slide into the next wave. The water rolls forward and appears still where he saw her slip beneath it, and Squall starts to wonder if he didn't imagine her. It's been so long, and he had long given up hope. He thinks again of her shadow trick, and wonders if he isn't really imaging the whole thing, trying to bring her back, when she made it clear she was leaving for good.

And then she emerges, and when she does, she looks right at him, and he is liquified inside.

 _Rinoa._

She stares, and he stares back. She slips into another wave and lets it carry her towards the shore, and he continues watching.

 _Are you real?_

She has to be real.

"I looked for you," he says. He is angry, he is hurt, he is so fucking happy to see her he's not sure he can even remember his own name. "Everywhere."

"I'm sorry—I think you're mistaking me for someone else."

Her voice is raspy and her words are flat and they slice down to the bone. She turns and starts to walk towards the factory, and he can see the occasional edge of shadow around her while she walks.

She is not as hidden as she was before, and he wonders if it is because her glamour lost its power when he addressed her, or if she is simply not trying as hard.

He doesn't think about it too long. Instead, he takes a step and follows her.

* * *

 _I'm marking this as part of The Successor challenge, with the complete understanding that I may not finish it by the end of the month, and it may take a different thematic direction than I planned regardless. I don't think it will end up being very long (maybe even only one more part?). But I didn't write anything Squall/Rinoa for the challenge at all last year, and it was looking like that might be the case again this year, and I started writing this out a week or so ago and figured I may as well see where it goes. :)_

 _On a weirder note, I realized today it's been over two years since I finished writing The Successor-my fic, not to be confused with the name of the challenge. Shouldn't have I have more to show for myself, now that I know I can write something through to completion? Apparently not. So uh, have more angst. :D_


	2. Chapter 2

_It is a rainy evening in November, and she has gotten up to brush her teeth for the evening, and it is the sight of her suitcase, only half unpacked from their last trip to Esthar, that catches her eye._

 _It's been a bad day. There are not good days, not usually, not anymore. She has gotten past the intensity of the flare-ups of random magic, even past most of the nightmares. Squall thinks it is a good sign. He thinks they are going to make it. Because he is on the outside, he can only see what is on the outside. She has shut him out more and more in an attempt to not feel anything, because when she starts to feel, even the good, she feels too much._

 _He can't know, that the effort of keeping it all inside is harder. That it is easier on her to let loose, to scream, to yell, to become a mad thing amidst a torrent of flare and darkness._

 _So she has grown numb, including to him._

 _She told him once, it was the appeal of his loneliness, that stood out to her the night they met. That for a moment, they were more than two lost souls standing in a crowded room._

 _Now she has grown lonely in their home, in the prison she has crafted for herself. And she sees her suitcase, and the thought comes back, of how it would be easier on them both if she could just leave. No more duty. No more desperation. No more feeling isolated beside the one person who was supposed to understand. He can move on, and she can…_

 _She packs silently, and takes a deep breath before she walks back into the living room, shoes on her feet and suitcase in her hand._

 _She doesn't give him a chance to protest, to fight, to try and keep her there. He stands up, understanding immediately apparent on his face, and she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him, passionately. Like it might be the last time. Like it is the last time._

 _And then she whispers a goodbye and tells him she will always love him, and she turns around and vanishes in a plume of smoke before he can try to follow._

 _._

The factory is cold, and in the darkness before moonrise Squall can see nothing.

He pursues her based on feeling alone, tripping over so much debris. The shock of seeing her is wearing off and he feels foolish. She has evaded him for ten years, and now he is looking for a shadow in the dark. He thinks of so many things he could say, thinks of how he might be able to fashion a fire to give him some visibility, thinks of anything except turning around, abandoning hope.

She has evaded him for ten years, and he is not going to give up now. He will tear his soul in half if that's what it takes to find whatever is left of hers.

But he only hears silence. Even the pounding surf is muted, and he wonders if she has not cast a silence spell over him, or if her presence has just affected the physics of this place. He can feel vibrations in the air that remind him of all the pieces she left behind, gone before he can reach out and touch them.

He has not junctioned in years, too afraid of losing the memories with her he will never get back, so he cannot even try experimental magic to test his theory of her latest betrayal.

But he is beyond experimenting, beyond subtlety, beyond reason, and he shouts into the darkness, "You owe me, Rinoa!"

His voice echoes, and at least that answers the question about whether she has cursed him.

 _Of course she has,_ he thinks. _But that was long before tonight._

And then, mere feet away from him, a white flame lights up in midair, and he sees her face clearly for the first time in ten years.

And the anger, the hurt is gone, and all he is left with is an overwhelming desire to embrace her.

.

She listens to him moving in the darkness, heart pounding in her throat. He is close enough to touch, and her body screams for it. Once, his arms around her quieted the madness. Once, she melted into him, brought back to earth by the warmth of his body, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her head.

The time since she saw him last dissolves, and she is hanging, suspended with memories on all sides. He was here yesterday. He has not been here in years. She sees him calling for her in a flower field in Winhill, and in the withering end of Time; she sees him standing alone on their old street in Timber. He breaks through steam and wires in the Sorceress Memorial and she falls into his arms, and he stands there at a loss, because that's where he honestly expected to find her. He is standing on the shore while the waves crash over his knees, now laughing in mild protest as she attempts to pull him into the freezing water, now screaming into the surf in accusation and heartbreak, and he is there, tonight, when he caught her under the ink-black sky.

"Stop," she hisses, and attempts to silence everything; all light, all sound, all memory she had of a time before. She draws the wide open space of her sanctuary into herself and—

" _You owe me, Rinoa!"_

She jerks back as if burned when she draws his echo in with the rest of the aether, but it is too late. His voice is back in her veins, and her skin _burns,_ the effort of keeping him out rendered futile with four small words.

She releases the pain, the heat, the _need_ into a white flame, and he is right in front of her, and she feels her eyes grow wide, a rush of fear followed by relief followed by fear followed by—

He steps forward.

The flame falls from her hand like mercury and pools on the floor between them, and in the silver light she sees what the break has done to him. He wears a new scar on his jaw, and sharp bones over hollow cheeks cast shadows into his eyes.

She wants to retreat, to find some place to hide in her home of cracked floors and the decaying ruins of an old world. Of a floor littered with broken shells and the skulls of birds, black smudges in the dirt where she has painted symbols of protection. Walls where she has scratched the same image in to the walls, what might be the head of a monster, of a lion, overandover and ove r—

He reaches out and his fingers wrap around hers before she can run, before she can fight, and the rest of existence drops away.

.

 _It is hours before he can walk back into their house, and the silence overwhelms him._

 _He sleeps on the couch that night, unable to sleep alone in a bed she might never return to. He tells no one, at first, and when enough time has passed that he can no longer lie, he takes his gunblade and a picture of her with him to Centra, where he hides, and doesn't try to pretend he's doing anything else. Someone takes care of selling the house for him, and he spends fitful nights and bleary days at the foot of the house of his childhood, waiting for the last of her to finally leave his system._

 _It never does._

* * *

 _There is one more part to this, and it is already written. Will be posted sometime before the end of August to still be included in the challenge._

 _And OMG thank you SO SO SO much to everyone who reviewed the first section! I very nearly left it as a standalone, and after the feedback was torn on being grateful it would continue since it got such a positive response, and wishing I'd left it alone because there's no way I can live up to such kind words!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Come home._

His voice reached her, at first. Cut into her while she was sleeping, whispered to her on the wind that rustled the trees, moved through the alleys. She thought it would stop, with enough time, with enough distance. Thought she would stop wanting to go home, apologize, work through things.

She left for a reason, after all.

But it never stopped.

 _Come home._

His voice reaches her now. Ten years of longing condensed into the feeling of his fingertips brushing against hers. She sees their old house. She sees them walking through the door, as if no time has passed at all. He says something that makes her laugh, and they kiss before he walks into his office, and she goes into the kitchen to start dinner.

 _Do you still have an office?_

She sees their home, dark and full of dust. The picture frames are broken and there are ghosts in the air.

She wants to pull her hand back from his. To shut out the memories and return them to darkness, call the sounds and shadows that have chased out any others who intruded on her solitude. She wonders if he would leave if she tried, or if he would not stand his ground, allow himself to be consumed rather than leave without her.

She knows the answer.

He tightens his grip in the time she hesitates, and she registers fear in his eyes for the first time since she saw him standing on the beach; fear, and hurt.

 _You owe me, Rinoa._

She owes him nothing. And she owes him everything.

He moves his other hand towards her face and she is terrified. Nobody has touched her since she walked away. Nobody has even seen her beneath the glamours that were necessary to survive.

 _Yes,_ she wants to say. _Please._

He sees her. He always has.

He is close enough to her that she can feel the heat radiating from his palm, and she closes her eyes and tries to lean in, and he withdraws, and instead, falls slowly to his knees. His head is bowed towards the floor, and he grips her fingers with both hands now. Inside her veins is a rope that has frayed and unraveled, and she feels it twist together and become whole. She feels more pain than she has felt in years, and lets out a small cry. The room spins and she is disoriented, memories crashing in, and fire burning through her.

She couldn't sever the bond. She tried, oh she tried. She chanted and screamed to the voices of the succession to release him, to let the madness consume her entirely, but he held on, even when she sent him nightmares, even when she finally sent him the happiness she hoped he needed to move on. He held on whether he meant to or not.

 _Kill him,_ was the only response she ever got. _It's the only way._

And it was only in those times she knew, she wasn't fully gone.

She crumpled it. Bent it. Turned it into something unrecognizable. But she never broke it.

And it hurts to feel it again, to feel the light that shines on every splinter and tear.

He still holds on.

She reaches for his chin and tilts his head up, and when she meets his eyes she is certain she is going to burst, that her skin is going to shatter and fill this place she has made her home with stardust, and that she will be no more. She left, because she could not bear the feeling of being trapped inside her own skin, and in the years that passed she bled into her surroundings, until the ruins of the old factory were charged with her mind, with the magic that floated docile beside her, because it was too much for her to hold inside.

 _(And she bathed in the sea and made herself almost-whole, and if he had not come when he did, would she have known it was him?)_

The mercury-light that still pools on the floor flickers between them, and Rinoa looks down, into the shadows of his face, and wonders what he has brought with him. Is he here to claim her, to collect her? To bring her home, into a world full of questions, a world she cast aside, a world where she is feared, and rightfully so? What would she do, out of the darkness? She is not sure she would survive.

And yet she is certain she cannot walk away from him again.

He parts his lips, and she is too afraid of what he might say, so she places both hand against his face and urges him up, and when he is standing beside her she leans slowly forward, and kisses him.

She is blinded, and she is helpless, and it is a distraction, it is just a kiss it is her veins _burning_ , and she has made a mistake, a terrible mistake, and she is prepared to lose herself, finally, fully, forever—

If he pushes her away, it might kill her. If he draws her in, it might kill them both.

She deepens the kiss, and waits.

.

She is going to turn him away. He's certain of this. There is too much fear in her eyes, and now that he sees her, fully sees her, he is aware of his betrayal. She left. She hid. If she had wanted him to find her, she would have allowed it. He felt her, in all that time. He knew it was her, when he screamed out in the night. Knew it was her, when the nightmares stopped abruptly, replaced with waking visions of a world he should be happy in.

 _You tried to build me a world where I wouldn't want you,_ he thinks, and refuses to break eye contact. _When the only thing in the world I wanted was you._

It is a world that trapped him. Sent him phone calls that brought him home, when he tried to go to their old places. Sent him mysterious women in dark bars he could pretend were her, sometimes to the point where it was her name that fell from his lips in a whisper.

He never could tell fact from fairy tale with her, even when she was around.

He would think he is dreaming now, but the dreams never hurt like this. In his dreams are death, drowning. Waking visions of his life tumbled on top of each other, time compressed (and he would know).

The urge to flee flashes in her eyes and he reaches for her before he can stop himself, and when their fingers touch it is a surge that holds him in place, freezes him, and it feels like the life is draining out of him, that everything he has retained is flowing towards the point their skin meets.

 _Come home,_ he thinks, although there is no home to go to. There is only a string of hotel rooms and sublets, wherever work allows before the absence of her chases him away.

He sees, briefly, their old house in Timber, sees them walking through it as they are today, before it fades into the dust it was when it became apparent he was never going back. He tightens his grip and feels the fear in her light up in response, and when his vision returns to _her,_ he is drained, and all fight has left his system.

 _Please,_ he wants to say, but the words will not form. He wants to reach for her, to slide his hand across her cheek, let his fingers move through her hair, but he is afraid. Of her power. Of her beauty. Of everything she is, and everything he has never been able to be. He draws back his hand and drops slowly to the floor and bows his head. She is as familiar now as the day she left, and whatever is left of him, he gives to her, willingly. She could walk away, could raze the building with him still inside, but he will not leave her. He feels his fingers on his chin, and waits for them to slide around his neck.

Instead, they lift his head up, and when he looks at her, he sees eternity.

 _This. This is why I couldn't let you go._ He opens his mouth to say the words out loud and she pulls him up, and presses her lips against his. He feels the fire under her skin, so familiar even after so much time, and he is powerless.

It does not occur to him to stop her, until the tightness around his heart grows stronger and stronger, until he can't breathe. Until he breaks away, when his legs give out beneath him. She catches him and lowers him back to the cold and dirty floor, and he is gasping and reaching for her.

It took him ten years to find her, and ten minutes for her to drain the life out of him. She is wailing and sobbing beside him, a terrible, frightening sound, and through fading vision, he sees wings erupt from behind her with a glow that shows him all the etchings on the wall, all the signs and sigils of her isolation.

 _I will always love you._

He hears the words she spoke to him before she left, and he hears them again, spoken beside his ear before she closes her wings around him and he feels her steal the rest of his life away.

.

"—can't go that far, mom will be mad."

"You're just scared!"

"Am not! I just don't want to get in trouble!"

"Scared of what?"

"Of a big stupid monster that isn't even real!"

"Is so!"

"Oh yeah? What's it look like?"

"Like a lion, the biggest lion you ever saw! With giant wings!"

"I thought you said it was a beautiful lady with the body of a lion?"

"It's both!"

"Impossible!"

"Look—there it is!"

The voices give way to screams, fading as three shadows run across the rocks and back to town.

And above the cliffs, a great shape appears, with delicate wings that catch the glow of the moon, and fold against the body of a lion. They are a ghost story now, a legend. A GF, some say, or a monster, or, for those who know, lovers, who could not die.

They are words whispered on the night wind. A siren song. A threat. A warning.

 _If you come here, you'll find me._

A promise.

* * *

This is the original ending to this fic. As I was writing it, I had another idea (largely due to listening to too much Florence + the Machine), and at the time of posting, I worried that this ending was too bleak. But I've since decided that this really is the way this story was meant to end, so I'm swapping the ending out over here. The alternate is posted at Archive Of Our Own, where this ending used to be.


End file.
